Humanitarian heroes celebrated with UNHCR Nansen Refugee Awards
Humanitarian heroes celebrated with UNHCR Nansen Refugee Awards
The 2025 UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award regional winners.
A Mexican businessman helping refugees rebuild their lives through work, an Iraqi activist empowering female conflict survivors in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, an Afghan refugee offering affordable education to refugees and locals in Tajikistan, and a Ukrainian NGO providing life-saving aid on the front lines of war are being honoured with awards from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
These four humanitarian heroes have been chosen as the regional winners of this year’s UNHCR Nansen Refugee Awards, which recognizes individuals, groups and organizations who do remarkable work to protect and assist forcibly displaced and stateless people around the world.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Geneva on 16 December alongside this year’s Global Laureate, Martin Azia Sodea, the Chief of Gado-Badzéré village in northern Cameroon, which has welcomed and integrated tens of thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic.
This year’s UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award regional winners are:
Pablo Moreno Cadena – Americas
A senior executive at Mexican appliance manufacturer MABE, Pablo Moreno Cadena has led the company’s proactive efforts to employ refugees from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, offering life-changing opportunities to hundreds of people fleeing violence and instability.
The company’s inclusion efforts go beyond simply providing jobs. Under Moreno’s leadership, refugees are fully integrated into MABE’s close-knit work community and provided with opportunities for professional growth and access to social protections for them and their families.
The success of the programme, according to Moreno, stems from refugees proving themselves to be assets rather than a burden, enriching the company and their host communities. This is borne out by the fact that Moreno and MABE’s initiative has inspired more than 600 other companies in Mexico to adopt similar inclusive hiring practices.
Pablo Moreno Cadena walks between stacks of packaged appliances in the MABE production plant in Saltillo, Mexico.
Marcos Aguilar (left), a MABE employee and refugee from Honduras, greets Pablo during a visit to the company's plant in Saltillo, Mexico.
Pablo Moreno Cadena greets a MABE colleague at the company's headquarters in Mexico City.
“We know that refugees who join the MABE family value it tremendously, because they are finally being given a second chance at life,” Moreno said. “But truly, I can tell you that we have learned more as a community from them than they have from us. It gives us all a great lesson about what courage is ... to face circumstances such as those they have experienced and not lose faith.”
“But most important of all is simply that it’s a win-win for everyone.”
Taban Shoresh – Middle East and North Africa
An aid worker, women’s rights activist and genocide survivor originally from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Taban Shoresh was inspired by her own experiences to found The Lotus Flower – a women-led organization that supports Iraqi women and girls affected by conflict and displacement.
Having grown from a staff of two in 2016 to a team of 150 today, The Lotus Flower is a grassroots operation that has helped over 100,000 people – many of them survivors of rape, torture, trafficking and slavery – through education, sport, skills development and livelihood opportunities.
Shoresh describes their work as drawing on the hope, strength and resilience of the women and girls they help, enabling them to be full participants and agents of change in their own communities. It is this empowering approach that is being recognized through the regional award.
Girls take part in The Skating Sisters project, run by The Lotus Flower in Rwanga camp for internally displaced people in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Taban Shoresh is the founder of The Lotus Flower, a women-led organization that supports conflict survivors in Iraq.
(From left to right) Mariam, Nafiya and Hamrin manufacture jam in Domiz camp for Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
“Anyone that faces adversity, especially through conflict and displacement – the sheer resilience and strength it takes to overcome something like that gives you the tools to bring so much into the world,” she says.
This philosophy is echoed by Nathifa, a trainer with The Lotus Flower in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. “What we have experienced in life was not easy,” she says. “Yet this hardship pushed us to stand on our feet, to be strong, and to help ourselves and others.”
Negara Nazari - Asia
Having arrived in Tajikistan in 2012 as a refugee from Afghanistan, Negara Nazari earned a degree in economics with support from a UNHCR DAFI refugee scholarship. Rather than pursuing a business career, she chose to give back by establishing a centre for young Afghan refugees unable to access education.
Starting out with just 20 pupils in 2020, today the Ariana Learning Center (ALC) has over 1,200 young learners enrolled on a pay-what-you-can basis, and has expanded to include local Tajik children as well as Afghans.
In addition to classes in languages, technology, mathematics and the arts, ALC also provides psychological counselling and leadership and management programmes for Afghan refugee women. They also have a kindergarten for 220 young children.
Afghan refugee and local Tajik pupils attend a class at the Ariane Learning Center in Vahdat.
Negara and her husband Wakil walk together in Vahdat, Tajikistan, where they co-founded the Ariana Learning Center.
“The centre is managed by a capable Afghan woman. It shows how women can play an important role in education and in our community,” says Afghan student Fatima.
Nazari says the impact of ALC confirms she made the right career decision. “Today, I see that true success is not measured by what we have achieved for ourselves but by how many lives we have touched.”
Proliska – Europe
Proliska is a Ukrainian NGO founded in 2006 and later became fully operational after the start of the armed conflict in 2014. It has continued to operate in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 in some of the most dangerous and isolated areas of the country.
Its dedicated staff work around the clock to provide life-saving assistance and protection to millions caught up in the war. They are often among the first responders in the wake of airstrikes and aerial attacks, ensuring that the most vulnerable – including older people, those with disabilities and families with few resources – are not forgotten.
As well as evacuating people from the front lines and supporting newly displaced people in transit centres and collective sites, Proliska also delivers food, water, medical care and other critical support to those unable or unwilling to flee areas caught up in fighting.
Lyzatska Mariia, 72, an evacuee from Kostiantynivka, is helped by Proliska case worker Oksana Taranenko (right) at Pavlohrad transit centre in eastern Ukraine.
Head of Proliska Yevhen Kaplin (right) and Dnipro regional coordinator Oleksii Prima (left) plan an evacuation route in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine.
A Proliska staff member insulates windows in a room housing internally displaced people at a collective site in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine.
What truly sets Proliska apart is the deep courage, compassion and commitment of its staff, whose tireless work to help their compatriots in need – often at great personal risk – is being recognized with this award.
“Proliska is always the first on site where help is needed,” explains Yevhen Kaplin, the Head of Proliska. “Ninety-nine per cent of our staff are either internally displaced people or people coming from front-line areas where we work. What drives them is the wish, should anything happen to them, to be helped as promptly as they do as part of our team.”
The UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award was established in 1954 in honour of Norwegian humanitarian, scientist, explorer and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen – the first High Commissioner for Refugees. This prestigious honour is given annually to individuals, groups or organizations in recognition of outstanding work to help refugees, internally displaced people and stateless people. The first Nansen laureate was Eleanor Roosevelt. Often, though, the award recognizes the work of lesser-known figures; unsung heroes whose work offers hope away from home.
